


His Rude Pen

by shinobi93



Category: 16th Century CE RPF, Shakespeare RPF
Genre: Being Walked In On, Literary References & Allusions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 14:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinobi93/pseuds/shinobi93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tom Nashe walks in on two of his friends and they find it hilarious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Rude Pen

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by cakesandfail's tags on [this tumblr post](http://cakesandfail.tumblr.com/post/71464382038/imagineyourotp-imagine-your-otp-kissing-in-a).
> 
> No warnings apply as far as I know, but as always, contact me if you think otherwise.

Kit taps on the table, fingers restlessly bouncing off the wood. Those who know him well recognise the gesture: he is writing, inside his head, crashing words together to test their sturdiness as one of his mighty speeches is crafted. His hands are neat, perhaps surprisingly so; he dashes about like a mad cat with its claws out, but still wants to look the height of fashion. His friends mutter that the only reason he got a patron was for a good cloak, a jewelled doublet. Mostly they’re envious of his theatrical success.

One man is not. Competitive, yes, but who needs envy when you can battle it out? In more ways than one. He sits on the other bench, drinking deeply. Their company is extensive, playhouse people mostly, trading the gossip of the day. Haunting taverns, but they are not ghostly, are all too real to those who must clean up after their revelries. William Shakespeare - Will as he is called here, Kit curling the word round his tongue in case nobody was sure he was giving it a double meaning - laughs along with the rest, making his own remarks where he sees an opening but mostly staying quiet. His own tongue trips over words sometimes here, where there’s always someone louder or more forceful. Usually Kit. Will shall be heard in time. Tom Nashe is not here tonight, assumed to be with some woman he will call his fine wench when he returns, but if he was, the noise of him and Kit would drown all else out. They encourage one another, and have known each other too long, Cambridge boys with humble beginnings.

Ned Alleyn stands, as if to recite, and Kit stabs a knife into the table. Unusual, for he tends to like his words echoing round the room, and it is likely that is what Alleyn intends. His nerves are shot today, his eyes jittery and skin itching.

‘I must write,’ Kit says himself as he takes to his feet, flourishing his arm dramatically as if he is more of an actor than Alleyn. He elbows his way out without checking to see who he has offending with such actions, then pauses at the end of the table, running his tongue across his lips impatiently.

‘‘Tis my will to be alone,’ he says a shade quieter, placing his emphasis where he wills it to be. The hint is taken: Will shoots him a despairing look, and inclines his head slightly. Christopher Marlowe is never a name that works so well for such a use.

Kit traverses the streets through the evening bustle of the city. The city that keeps him writing, though he does not write of it. Even his encounter with a dead king, pokered up the arse for his failings, did not rouse great speeches of England, of London, nor mocking verse or prattling chat. Will had laughed, fondly, and asked if his tales of Harry the Sixth had inspired the work. This had been denied vehemently, of course. He had no one source, not contained by the leaves of Holinshed or the historical playacting that came before. Inspiration is all, and all is inspiration.

Back in his rooms, he scribbles down the lines he was forming earlier, tapping his fingers at the rhythms of the words. Will is delayed by his companions, caught in a contest to mock recent offerings in the playhouse world, and he arrives breathless, doublet half-buttoned like he was starting the process as he ran. Kit sings out in mock desperation.

‘ _O lente, lente currite noctis_ -’

Will stops his dramatics by crossing the small chamber swiftly and pulling him up by the shirt.

‘For someone who does not act, you think the world’s a stage,’ Will mutters before kissing him confidently, smelling the familiar tobacco and wine as he does. Kit, never wanting to be outdone, pulls Will back down onto the chair with him, the straddling position clearly well-known to the pair. The sounds of the city ring out from the street below, but they ignore them, caught in this play of their own, both trying to write the narrative and steal the show. A pot of ink is caught by an elbow and that is ignored too, the hazard of the playwright. Kit finishes the job of Will’s buttons, murmuring insults about the doublet in question against Will’s lips. He is difficult to silence.

Will throws out a hand, unknowingly trails fingers through the spilt ink, and soon his attempts to remove Kit’s shirt are shown in stark black, lines skidding across the material. Kit laughs, honest and less malicious than usual, and responds in kind.

‘Master Shakespeare, your shirt is ruined.’

Will grins from his higher vantage point and leans down to trail kisses against Kit’s neck. He’s about to make some comment about why are they being so slow, like those horses of the damn night, when a loud noise startles him.

‘Ki-it,’ shouts out the intruder as the door bangs open. ‘I’ve been writing and I-’

Thomas Nashe stops dead. Will raises his head slowly, trying to ignore the shaking that signifies Kit’s silent laughter.

‘No,’ mutters Tom, ‘No, no, I did not need to see-’

‘Tom-’ Will tries to start, but Kit’s laughter is audible now, a kind of cackling sound that echoes round the small space louder than words. Nashe throws down the papers he was holding, glaring at them.

‘I can’t finish this now, the words will make me think of…’ Tom stops and gestures at them, both looking back at him but otherwise their position unchanged, Kit with a glint in his eye.

‘Your entry could’ve been when-’ Kit begins before Will clamps his hand over his mouth. Poor Tom doesn’t need to hear that: he is currently gazing round the room, taking in the ink pools and ink everywhere like writing is to blame for the sight he will now have etched onto his brain.

‘I’ll go,’ Tom says after a few seconds of silence, silence facilitated by Will’s well-timed hand placing. He turns and slams the door shut with as much force as he can muster. ‘Lock it,’ he shouts out from the corridor as he leaves. The laughter threatening the scene bursts out, Will clutching onto Kit’s shoulders to stop himself from falling onto the floor.

‘Didn’t seem very surprised,’ Will says once they’ve calmed down, as he thinks back on Tom’s entrance. Shocked at the sight, indeed, but at the sight, not the circumstance. Kit, ever taking the world in his stride, grins lasciviously.

‘Obvious: it is you.’ A pause, a familiar kind. ‘And such as knew he was a man would say, “William, thou art made for amorous play”.’

Will shakes his head. Not again. At least, he knows, Kit’s not reciting his own translations of Ovid, like the Roman poet is in the room watching them. The lines he chooses never quite fit, either, like he never expects reality to intersect with his fiction. Maybe, Will thinks, he will write an abundance of his own romantic plots and see how Kit likes being recited lines of those. This thinking is only momentary however, as soon he feels lips back against his, and finally they are kissing not quoting.

-

Weeks later, by the time Will and Kit have bored of smirking at each other whenever Tom Nashe walks into the tavern, a new poem of Nashe’s is being passed around. Wine and high spirits are flowing freely, a good sign for the poem. Will claps Tom on the back, grinning.

‘Pretty little piece,’ he smirks, his voice loud. ‘Nashe’s Dildo, yes?’

‘No,’ glares Tom, but in good humour, ‘It’s called-’, but shouts have started up, bragging taunts of how such a predicament would never happen to them. He did want to amuse, after all, so he concedes the title and turns to Kit, currently reading his way through the manuscript and making exclamations about Ovid.

‘“I kiss, I clap, I feel, I view at will”,’ reads Kit aloud, ‘“Yet dead he lies not thinking good or ill”. Tom, one might think you have experienced such a difficulty yourself.’

‘Never me,’ laughs Tom loudly, then bends to Kit’s ear. ‘And if it so happened I had, it was remembrance of a certain scene from your chamber that did it.’

‘Inspiration of such wanton art,’ whispers Kit back. ‘What an honour!’

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so Nashe's poem is 'The Choice of Valentines', which I definitely recommend reading if you haven't (and it was known popularly as 'Nashe's Dildo', too).
> 
> Kit's Latin quotation is the Ovid line he gives to Faustus in his final speech, and his name-changed reciting of his own poetry is from 'Hero and Leander'. His references to Ovid are due to his English translation of Ovid's Amores, which is what Will is complaining about him quoting.


End file.
